Learning how to read

Reading is one of the four strategies used for learning any of languages of the world. As much same and necessary for speaking any language listening is, as for writing it is reading. In other words, listening is a reflection of spoken words and reading is that of whatsoever is written. A paramount difference between listening and reading is, the former lacks the authenticity and veracity of an argument as a spoken word has tendency to be distorted, whereas the latter is fully authentic, can be challenged everywhere as a written word in normal circumstances cannot easily be watered down.

Reading, sorrowfully, is accorded negligible importance. In the contemporary world, it is day by day becoming difficult and unknown phenomenon and is being replaced by visuals, PowerPoint presentations, audio listening and etcetera. Predominantly, in a less-educated milieu, people believe that listening is an effective means of communication and all that measures up to their needs regarding understanding of a language. Although it’s partly true that the main purpose of learning any language as a means of communication can be fulfilled by learning how to speak it with the help of listening, yet there is substantial need of learning how to read for reading has larger scope and is more authentic and powerful instrument.

Reading is a complex process involving decoding, understanding, interpreting and in some important cases retaining a written piece. It is by reason of its complexity that writing requires strenuous efforts to be digested in a way as intended; as pursuant to a popular belief it is too often misunderstood by readers. Ergo, reading implies undivided attention and befitting rudimentary knowledge, without which a reader’s mind deviates from the actual understanding of a written word, giving it a totally different meaning in accordance with the thoughts and ideas already existing there.

Reading is not just limited to looking at, and uttering the sentences written on a document. It is something demanding larger than that. My good fellows often inquire, desperately, of me how to read articles in such a way to grasp and retain its crux and information mentioned there, as for them it is difficult to do so. They complain that they have short memory; what they just read after a hour or two begins to fade away from there, and for that they have to steep themselves in grasping write-ups. For it not only demotivates them, but also bars them from developing a habit of reading, I have to reiterate to them that it happens only in the beginning days of reading; when to understand something we have to painstakingly go through it.

Problem isn’t just that absorbing by reading is difficult, but it is: people have taken reading lightly–or say wrongly. As in the normal circumstances, reading is mistaken only for pronouncing and meaning the words, for people to understand the process of reading I have divided it into three forms: pronouncing, absorbing, and analysing.

Reading is a complex process involving decoding, understanding, interpreting and in some important cases retaining a written piece. It is by reason of its complexity that writing requires strenuous efforts to be digested in a way as intended; as pursuant to a popular belief it is too often misunderstood by readers

Pronouncing a written piece means reading that without comprehensive understanding of as to what that write-up is meant to elaborate upon. It is just understanding the meaning of the second sentence, without trying to match it with the meaning of the first sentence. It may interest you, and save your time being wasted, otherwise, on something useless, but it doesn’t affect you in any way, and nor does it add to your knowledge. It is because the students have got the habit of such reading they tend to forget what they read within hours if not at once.

Absorbing a written document implies discreetly reading between the lines and grasping comprehensive insights into the events mentioned in that write-up, which is what results in affecting your mind. With augmentation of interest into reading and improvement in knowledge, it helps you understand the actual purpose of as to why that write-up is authored. It is by then you would be gaining what actually that document keeps for you. For such reading demands time and toil, students prefer other material to it.

Analysing a written work means completely going through, grasping and examining it. It requires full attention on every point mentioned in what you read. It helps you first distinguish between your and the writer’s point of view on the topic and get the knowledge of what is right and wrong to both of you, and then what you need to agree to or to disagree to. It further gives you an edge of the edification and retention by following the process of refining what you read. What you just utter, what you absorb, and what you agree to, and in the last what you retain make a plenty of difference, indeed.

Sadly, because of the above reason among many others, reading from time to time has failed miserably to attract people towards itself and create its space in the midst of hectic lives of people in many sections of the societies of the world. Although it is wrong to state that there is a little number of readers present in the world for there exist great and cultivated persons who have been reading for decades, yet neither is that wrong that there is worldwide negligible number of readers who seem to have literary reading ambition. People these days read only for a brief period of time, and the select material, and surprisingly in view of their educational needs, in dire circumstances when there is no other option left.

Given the dynamics of learning have changed with the aid of growing information technology, as in the status quo, video-based and PowerPoint-assisted learning have advanced, people worldwide seem to have lost interest in reading adequately. But reading in actual fact is wielding preference over other things. There is no denying that reading calls for widening efforts as in the very outset, it is too time-consuming an activity to follow, but once you develop a knack of reading with its process being followed by, it will be quick and easy and all these forms of reading would be working parallel, making you feel fully comfortable with ‘reading comprehension’ and retention.

The writer is a student of English Literature at Shah Abdul University. He can be reached at afaqueafaqi@gmail.com